Pulled over in Beaverton: City prolific with traffic citations

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»Play VideoBeaverton police officer Mike Rowe talks with a driver who he stopped for passing in a no-passing zone.

BEAVERTON, Ore. – If you are passing through Beaverton, you need to be on your best driving behavior.

The KATU “On Your Side Investigators” uncovered some pretty eye opening numbers when it comes to traffic stops and tickets. Officers in Beaverton are the ticket writing kings and queens; it's not even a close race when we compared traffic enforcement by cities of similar size.

We wanted to know why.

In 2010, Beaverton cops wrote nearly 15,000 tickets. That's a lot more than Gresham (9,947) and twice as many as Hillsboro (7,565), even though the cities are roughly the same size.

The trend continued in 2011: Beaverton police wrote 20,000 tickets, nearly twice as many as Gresham (10,761) and three times as many as Hillsboro (6,537). Even compared to traffic tickets given out in significantly bigger cities like Salem (19,546) and Eugene (13,412), Beaverton came out higher for traffic tickets that year.

City

Beaverton

Hillsboro

Gresham

Eugene

Salem

Traffic Citations (2010)

14,958

7,565

9,974

16,164

14,075

Traffic Citations (2011)

20,561

6,537

10,761

13,412

19,546

And those numbers don't include Beaverton's red light and photo radar cameras. Add those in and Beaverton issued 33,253 tickets last year; four times more than Gresham (8,318) and six times more than Hillsboro (5,612).

The city started fining people caught taking right hand turns without stopping. But, said Spalding,” We're not trying to make money on any of these programs."

Instead, that new income allowed the city to hire two more traffic cops, and a lieutenant to oversee the traffic unit, as well as more court employees to handle the new case load.

So how much money does Beaverton bring in from citations and where does it all go? The city collected about $6 million in the 2012 fiscal year. While the total includes parking tickets, criminal citations, code violations and other court fines, drivers certainly forked over most of the cash. It was more than enough to cover the $4 million traffic program budget.

We're told the remainder - about $1.6 million - was used to fund other police programs. Indeed, the traffic program easily exceeded its ‘budgeted’ amount of tickets issued (see table below).

Type

Number Issued

Budgeted

Infractions

19,484

17,222

Photo/Red Light

13,769

N/A

Parking

1,512

1,463

Criminal

969

949

Misdemeanor

1,256

974

Code Enforcement

36

N/A

Total Traffic Citations

33,253

17,222

Total Overall Citations

37,026

20,608

In voting for the program, city officials said they had public opinion on their side. Mayor Denny Doyle said at the time, "It's a long overdue expansion. People if you meet them in grocery stores, here, there - they say 'can you get people to slow down.’” And Beaverton makes it a priority with nine traffic cops on the street writing tickets. By comparison, Hillsboro just has four and Gresham has six.

State records show Beaverton’s crash statistics consistently outpace the other cities of its size locally, even after the traffic program’s expansion.

“When you come across a traffic stop you never know what you're going to come across,” said Lt. Adam Spang. “You stop someone for a cell phone violation and the next thing you know you're arresting them on a warrant."